1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for efficiently opposing the surface of a sheet-like material to a standard plane with a predetermined space or distance therebetween.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The method for opposing the sheet-like material to the standard plane with a predetermined space therebetween has been used often in a device in which a pattern is recorded on a sensitive material such as an IC (integrated circuit) pattern printing machine. For example, in a non-contact (proximity) IC or LSI (large scale integrated) pattern printing machine, the pattern of a mask (standard plane) is printed on the surface of a sensitive material (sheet-like material) with a space of several tens of microns therebetween. However, in these machines, IC or LSI patterns of good quality can not be obtained unless the space between the surface of the sensitive material and the mask is at a particular predetermined space. For this purpose, it may be considered that the printing is done with the space between the carrier and the mask being fixed, but this method has a defect that the space between the surface of the sensitive material and the mask varies depending on the sensitive material even when the sensitive material is coated uniformly on a wafer, because a silicon wafer used for producing IC or LSI patterns has usually an error of 0.2 to 0.3 mm (in the case of a 2 inch diameter wafer) and 0.5 to 0.7 mm (in case of a 3 inch diameter wafer), and the wafer itself has an irregular thickness, and thus IC or LSI patterns of good quality can not be obtained.
For overcoming the above defects, a method has been proposed, in which an equalizer mechanism such as a spherical receiver is provided on the sensitive material carrier to make the carrier tiltable, and the sensitive material is deposited on the carrier and the carrier is moved toward a calibrator having a collision plane present at a predetermined space so as to collide the surface of the sensitive material with the collision plane.
According to the above method, the relation between the sensitive material and the mask surface is that they are parallel and spaced with a predetermined distance, and thus IC or LSI patterns of good quality can be obtained. However, in this conventional method, the sensitive material collides with the calibrator at the position of the mask so that many steps are required at the position of the mask, thus lowering the operation efficiency.